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Our fascination with negativity, when it comes to football, somehow dragged us away from the light where we were supposed to see the splendour of the art that athletes like Kangwa, Chigova, Rio and Sekete displayed that afternoon at Barbourfields and into the darkness where, like vampires, all that mattered to us was the sight of chaos and blood on the floor

IF you have just landed from Mars, and relied on the back pages of our newspapers, you will be forgiven to think that the biggest story in the Battle of Zimbabwe showdown was an ugly incident that erupted when the clock hit the half hour mark.

You would be forgiven to think that this big game was all about the madness of a Bosso forward who, in his moment of anger lost his attachment to the magical power of reasoning and, in a fit of rage, kicked out at his opponent.

You would also be forgiven to think that this huge match was all about the short fuse of an equally short Dynamos defensive rock which exploded, in his moment of rage, and shattered this beautiful image of a cultured ice-cool footballer that he had built for himself in the past two years.

But to tie the Battle of Zimbabwe to just that ugly and unfortunate incident, as many pundits have tried to do all week, would be a shameless act of betrayal to the immense contribution, to one of the best matches of the season, by a group of players whose stars shone brightest on the grand stage.

A player like Bruce Kangwa, who was a bundle of inspiration for his team, with a performance plucked from the top drawer, courageously carrying the punishing weight of his heavyweight club, and all the dreams of millions of its fans on his little shoulders, to turn on a show that could be classified as vintage stuff.

A player like George Chigova, who towered above everyone else, with a grand performance for a grand occasion, standing tall when his club needed him to and producing a clutch of outstanding saves, in a remarkable goalkeeping show that was as reassuring as it was impressive, and played a huge part in the destiny of the match.

A player like Peter “Rio” Moyo who, once he got going and stamped his authority in the midfield, became the conductor of an orchestra that produced a sound so beautiful it was embraced by Soweto and made everyone on that stand believe that this could be the defining afternoon for their beloved team, and with every touch, move and trick, fired the levels of expectations.

Or a player like Cliff Sekete, who came in when his team needed someone to ensure that the blue touch paper was well and truly lit and, with a performance rich in quality supplemented by a bag of trickery that kept fooling the opposition and the presence of mind to see, and run into, the open spaces that his tricks opened in that midfield, had a huge bearing in shifting the tide in this fierce contest.

Our fascination with negativity, when it comes to football, somehow dragged us away from the light where we were supposed to see the splendour of the art that athletes like Kangwa, Chigova, Rio and Sekete displayed that afternoon at Barbourfields and into the darkness where, like vampires, all that mattered to us was the sight of chaos and blood on the floor.

So, the whole week we have been singing, Partson Jaure is an outcast who should be banned from the game and the music has been so loud, amplified of course by the big Zifa voice, with the association’s communications manager, Xolisani Gwesela, blasting the Zimbabwe international defender and, in a statement pregnant with both fury and agenda setting for the inevitable hanging of this footballer, turned himself into the complainant, arresting officer, prosecutor and judge.

Because we have become so anti-football, we have drifted far away from the real world of this game, where the stars are the players and the magic is what comes from the field, and found a new home on our isolated reality- show island, where we fool ourselves that what matters are the administrators and what comes out of the boardroom, all we have done this week is persecute Jaure.

Because we have become so anti-football, what appeals to us is the negative stuff, even if it was a single 30th minute incident, and we become so allergic to the beauty of everything that Bruce Kangwa displayed that day, in one of the stand-out individual performances of the season, and everything that Cliff Sekete gave us that afternoon, as he turned back the hands of time, to the days when he was at Gunners and everyone spoke highly of him.

How Bruce’s beautiful show, which became better and better as the minutes flew past and that lasted the full 90 minutes, can be overshadowed by an incident that happened in the 30th minute, something that we have seen over and over again in this game, a player being fouled and kicking out at his marker, shows us why, in the past few years, we have become an anti-football mob.

How Sekete’s artistic show, which was a game-changer for a team that had until then relied on its defensive qualities, could be upstaged by the fury of a teammate who lost his cool after being sent off, and was so reminded by his teammates who knew there was more to their mission than imitating amateur boxers, provides the answer, just in case you were wondering, why we have become such an anti-football mob.

Jaure Should Not Be Walking Alone
What Partson Jaure did, to physically threaten referee Thabani Bamala with a kick, and not an uppercut as our correspondent in Bulawayo somehow reported, was at best foolish, for a player of his status, and at worst, suicidal, because in this game, if you assault a referee, you are digging your grave and your talents, no matter how exceptional, would be buried and soon forgotten.

In the past year, Jaure has grown to become one of the best, if not the best, central defender in the domestic Premiership and that he could mature so rapidly, from a man who was playing Division One football at La Liga recently to become the defensive rock on which a team like Dynamos can build its absolute trust, has been one of the great success stories of the league.

As his profile rises, it also comes with responsibility because he has become a role model for my boy in Grade Seven, your boy in Grade Six, scores of boys in Primary School and others, who haven’t started their primary school journey, but who have started to nature dreams of one day becoming as good as Partson Jaure.

It means he can’t just do as he pleases because what he does, especially when the kids are watching, has an effect in shaping their behaviour, both in the short and long term, because to their little minds powered by innocence, it’s pretty cool because they saw Jaure doing it, and if he could do it live on television, why shouldn’t they do it in the privacy of their school grounds?

To respond, with such a degree of anger as he did on Sunday, and turn himself into a bull that wanted to bring down Bamala, was wrong and should be censured because it was out of order and was a blow to a clean-cut image that he had worked so hard to cultivate for himself in the past two years, which made him one of those footballers you liked, even if he didn’t play for your team.

But I have a problem with people who want to turn our football into some sort of Animal Farm, where all players are equal but some players are more equal than others, where all officials are equal but some officials are more equal than others, where all supporters are equal but some supporters are more equal than others where all clubs are equal but some clubs are more equal than others.

The reverse fixture between Highlanders and Dynamos was as explosive as the first and had its fair share of incidents with most of this stuff coming right at the end after Jaure, once again, found himself under the spotlight when he struck a last-gasp equaliser, in the sixth minute of time added on, which the visitors felt was daylight robbery given that four minutes had been shown by the fourth official.

The Herald
It was a bitter end for the visitors as they mobbed referee Norman Matemera, in unsportsmanlike behaviour, accusing the match official of cheating them when he ended the game three minutes later than the advertised time after the fourth official Nomore Musundire had indicated four minutes on his board.

Some of the furious Highlanders players could not control their emotions and had to be restrained as they mobbed the referee after the final whistle.

Daily News
After the game Highlanders players, led by Mthulisi Maphosa, mobbed the referee protesting against his decision.

Bulawayo24.com
It was a bitter end for the visitors as they mobbed the referee Norman Matemera accusing the match official of cheating them when he ended the game three minutes late after the fourth official Nomore Musundire had indicated four minutes of added time.

Referee Norman Matemera in His Report
“Soon after the match Highlanders players came and mobbed the referee complaining about added time.”
We all saw what happened that day, Mthulisi Maphosa, Munyaradzi Diya, Milton Ncube, leading the mass charge on the referee, Willard Mashinkila-Khumalo and Kelvin Kaindu, to their eternal credit, intervening just in time to stop the players from reaching the referee.
This wasn’t just one man who had lost his cool but virtually an entire battalion that had been incensed by the referee and we will never know what would have happened if Mashinkila-Khumalo and Kaindu had not used their cool heads to diffuse the explosive situation.
Since Matemera had mentioned it in his report, which the PSL use as the basis for taking action, maybe one or two players could have been dragged before the disciplinary committee, just as they have done in the Jaure case, and that would have helped to destroy any conspiracy theories that have now emerged that one team is being targeted while the other is being given a soft landing.

What happened that day was just as bad as what happened on Sunday and the expectation would have been, if this wasn’t Animal Farm, for Zifa to also issue a statement, back then, describing those players who charged at Matemera as hooligans and warning them that they risked being thrown out of the game.

If that had happened, Zifa would have demonstrated good leadership and their intervention, to warn Jaure that he risked being thrown out of the game in the wake of what happened at Barbourfields, would have been embraced without the innuendoes that now dress it with some in the Dynamos saying it’s part of an agenda against their club.

The situation is further complicated by the fact that those in the Dynamos camp, who are crying that they have become victims, don’t have anyone that they can call one of their own — in key positions both at PSL and Zifa — while there are a host of ex-Highlanders officials in key positions at the top levels of football administration in this country.

Zidane Head-butting Materazzi, It Runs In This Game
While we all want to see role models on our football fields, we have to live with the reality that this is a very emotional game and, when stakes are high, a lot of things can happen and suddenly some can lose control.

There was a huge brawl at Soccer City on Saturday during the Soweto Derby with the Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs players involved in a mass wrestling contest and seven years ago, in the biggest game in football, the World Cup final, Zinedine Zidane snapped and slammed his head into the chest of Marco Materazzi.

Zidane still won the Golden Ball, for the best player of that World Cup, which showed that football has this conscience that its finest artists are not necessarily angels and, on the occasions that they stray, there should be a programme to help them in their rehabilitation because, as humans, they are prone to err.

In ’98 Paolo Di Canio pushed referee Paul Alcock into the ground and was banned for 11-matches by the English FA but the game still welcomed him back, after completion of his suspension, because it knew he had a value that he brought and the following season his volleyed goal for West Ham, against Wimbledon, was voted BBC Goal of the Season and SkySport Goal of the Decade.

In 2001, he won the Fifa Fair Play Award when he decided to catch the ball, rather than shoot into an empty net, because Everton ‘keeper Paul Gerrard lay injured on the ground having twisted his leg in the build-up to the attack.

In just three years, Di Canio had moved from villain, banned for nine months, to winning the Fifa Fair Play Award because football gave him another chance, it didn’t turn its back on him simply because he lost his cool one afternoon and pushed referee Alcock to the ground, and only recently he was manager of Sunderland.

The system showed him that what he had done was wrong but, crucially, it rehabilitated him and helped him find a way back into the game and he showed that it was possible to reform as he transformed himself from the man who pushed a referee into the ground into one who won the Fifa Fair Play Award in a space of just three years.

This is what our game should do, acknowledge that once in a while we will have such challenges because of all the emotions involved, react accordingly without fear or favour when it happens and then lay out a rehabilitation process that will allow us to help these young men realise the error of their ways and enable them to come back stronger and more focused.

Quote Of The Week — Ndumiso Gumede, Zifa Referees Committee Chairman
“As the Referees Committee we are extremely worried about Jaure’s actions. We had a referee by the name of Tsuro who died after being assaulted by players. We are not saying this because Jaure is a Dynamos player but that is an unacceptable and heinous crime.”
Sir Alex Ferguson On His Book And Manchester United

“I wrote it for the fans, not the press. I wanted them to understand how hard it is to manage United. If we lose it’s front page, if we win it’s a back page.”

To God Be The Glory!
Come on United!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Chicharitoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

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